Читать книгу The First Time He Died - Ethel Lina White - Страница 4

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SOON after the news became known the first flowers arrived at Jasmine Cottage. They were brought by a matron who was so sorry to hear of Charlie's death that she wanted to know more about it.

To her surprise the door was opened by Puggie Williams, wearing a mulberry-silk dressing-gown, which threw up all the smouldering tints of his complexion. He appeared to have been keeping up his spirits in time-honoured fashion, for he stared stupidly at the caller's bunch of white violets.

"What are these for?" he asked.

"Just a few blooms from my frame, for—for the room," explained the inquisitive lady.

"Oh, Charlie." Puggie's face lit up. "By gum, the poor little chap will be pleased." He sighed as he corrected himself. "I mean, he would be pleased if he could see them."

"How is Mrs. Baxter?" inquired the matron.

"Crashed. Definitely crashed." Puggie lowered his voice. "She's just sent the maid away. Positively can't stick any one around. Nerves, you know."

"Can't I do something to help?"

"Nothing, thanks frightfully. There's always P.W. on tap. She's used to me, so I don't count." He plunged his short bulbous nose into the white violets. "The stink of these always bring back a memory," he said sentimentally. "A wet country road and a red-haired girl in riding-kit. We'd been coming back from hunting, and she—"

He broke off and added, "Well, Charlie's just another memory now. Thanks for the violets, Mrs. Er-Ah-Um. Charlie'll love them."

A little later, Puggie Williams was popular for the first time, for he became Official News. He appeared in High Street, wearing a dark suit, and combined pink eyelids with a set expression.

He informed people that Mrs. Baxter was deeply grateful for every one's sympathy, but was too upset to see callers until after the funeral.

"I'm rushing it on, on purpose," he explained. "Day after to-morrow if I can make the grade. Fact is, Vera—Mrs. Baxter—is morbid about death. Can't keep her out of the room. She'll be normal once the—body's out of the house. Besides, directly it's over I can clear out."

The fact that Puggie was convention-conscious caused him to soar in the popular estimation.

"Is it a public funeral?" asked some one.

"No, strictly private. Only, if friends showed up, she'd naturally appreciate it."

"Flowers?"

Puggie looked doubtful as he scratched a pimple with a long patrician hand.

"Flowers?" he repeated. "Well, it's like this. The widow wanted none. But he felt it would help the florists. You know what a chap he was for thinking of others."

"So—he knew?" asked a woman huskily.

"Yes." Puggie gulped in sympathy. "We couldn't fool him. He knew he was passing on. Conscious to the last."

To change a painful subject, the matron of the white violets asked about future plans.

"Will Mrs. Baxter be staying on here?"

"No," replied Puggie, "definitely not. The mere thought of what she bumped into here would make her shudder. She may stay out her quarter...Well, I must be moving."

He saluted gravely and passed on his way to the undertaker's, where he stated his requirements.

"I've brought Mr. Baxter's measurements, because Mrs. Baxter can't bear to hear the men coming, until—until they've got to. How soon can you knock up a rough shell?"

"I've one in stock which might do at a pinch," replied the undertaker. "There's so much illness that we have to be prepared."

"Good," nodded Puggie. "Send it up to-morrow morning at twelve. And send the coffin one-thirty, sharp, the next day. I want the funeral to be two o'clock."

As he left the arrangements entirely to the taste and discretion of the undertaker, the remainder of the short interview was satisfactory to both.

"You understand," he said, as he left the shop, "plain, but good. And no one's to come mucking round. If you want to know anything, ring me. I'll be in all day to-morrow...And now, I've got to flag the vicar."

After he had left the Vicarage, there were still visits to be paid, so that some time elapsed before he returned to Jasmine Cottage, where Vera met him in the passage.

There was no hint of the distracted widow in her appearance. She looked smart as paint in a very becoming black frock, which was not mourning, since she had been wearing it all the winter. It suited her fair colouring remarkably well. Her lips were tinted coral, and exactly matched her cigarette-holder.

Her small face, however, grew sharp with worry as she listened to Puggie's recital, and when she spoke, her voice grated like a saw.

"You fool. Why didn't you say 'no flowers'? We shall have people messing round here."

"I was thinking of poor Charlie," remarked Puggie quietly. "It's a compliment to him. After all, Vera, it's his due."

"Perhaps so." Vera shrugged. "But, Puggie, what possessed the idiot to promise the girl a fiver? Where am I to find one? Growing on a lamppost?"

Puggie patted her thin shoulders.

"Don't worry, old girl," he advised. "Take one fence at a time."

Later on, additional details of the death at Jasmine Cottage were circulated, when the maid—Minnie Reed—was seen walking about the town, dressed in her best clothes.

"I've got a week's holiday," she explained. "The mistress was wonderful right up to the time of the master's death, and then she went to bits and screamed to leave her alone with him. After all I done, she swept me out of the house like so much rubbish."

It was plain that the maid considered that she had been cheated out of a sensational experience, although she admitted that she was allowed to wish her master "Good-bye."

She made the most of that.

"They called me into the room just before the end. He was sinking fast. His face looked like wax and his hands were cold as ice. He shook hands with me, but he couldn't speak, only whisper. He said, 'Good-bye, Minnie, and thank you for all your kindness to me. I didn't know you when I made my Will, but your mistress will give you five pounds to remember me.'"

Among others who heard of Charlie Baxter's death was a schoolgirl who was home for the Christmas holidays. She was a wholesome, athletic youngster of sixteen, in the pudding-face stage, but with promise of attraction. She had only two ambitions—to pass the Senior Cambridge and to enter for the Junior Golf Championship.

When she was going to the Library one wet afternoon for her mother, she dropped the book in the road. Charlie Baxter, who was passing at the time, picked it up and wiped off the flecks of mud with his clean handkerchief.

The courtly gesture left the girl gaping with astonishment. She was inarticulate when he carried the book for her to the Library. On the way he complimented her on the goal she had shot at a recent Ladies' Hockey Match, and discussed the game in general, and her form in particular.

The girl went home feeling that every cell in her body had been subjected to a chemical change. For the first time she experienced the chaotic upheaval of Nature. Hitherto she had been a boy, and would have been murderous to a Constant Nymph on the hockey field.

For about a week she hugged her secret as she rubbed Pond's cold cream into her face at night, and went to soppy, sentimental pictures. She idealised Charlie to a knight of King Arthur's Court. And then, in the midst of her dawning rapture, she heard of his death.

She was having afternoon-tea in the drawing-room, and she went on munching quantities of hot crumpet, without comment or show of emotion. The strength of her self-consciousness compelled her to hide her feelings. No one must know of her still-born romance.

But as the truth gradually hit home she felt she could not endure the ache in her heart and the bitter sense of loss. Gulping down her last cup of tea she rushed up to her small room at the top of the house.

Regardless of cold, she stood for a long time at her open window, staring down at the huddle of roofs, piebald with patches of semi-melted snow. The blanched hills, the leaden sky, and the fading light all suggested the hopeless twilight of a life without love.

At a sudden memory of a dark bearded face, with liquid brown eyes, and the gleam of strong white teeth displayed in a smile, a lump rose in her throat which nearly choked her. She reminded herself that she was only sixteen and had to endure a life-sentence of loneliness and grief.

The burden of her sorrow was too great for her to bear. Since she had gone away to boarding-school she had given up her childish custom of saying prayers in public, although she often murmured petitions under the sheets.

But now she dropped on her knees, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, put out her soul in a frantic prayer for the unattainable.

"God, give him back to me. Let him be alive now. Don't let him be dead."

It is said that faith will remove mountains. Yet this schoolgirl—without a scrap of faith—apparently achieved the impossible, and worked a major miracle.

Even as she sobbed out her petition, Charlie Baxter was sitting in the kitchen at Jasmine Cottage, smoking his pipe.